Richard and CP24 anchor Nneka Elliott discuss about Leonard DiCaprio’s Oscar entry “The Revenant,” the stop motion animation of “Anomalisa” and the cinematic clearcutting of “The Forest.”
Richard and Marci chat about Leonard DiCaprio’s Oscar entry “The Revenant,” the stop motion animation of “Anomalisa” and the cinematic clearcutting of “The Forest.”
Leonardo DiCaprio makes $25 million dollars per movie. So he has money. His best friend is Tobey McGuire and his little black book reads like a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, so he’s never lonely. He has opulent homes on both the left and right coasts of America—one comes equipped with a vitamin C infused shower—and even owns a 104 acre unpopulated island off the coast of Belize.
He’s a superstar with all the creature comforts money can buy. Do you know what he doesn’t have? An Oscar.
He’s come close several times, earning nominations for his work in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street but he’s never entered the winner circle.
He’s always been gracious in defeat, smiling and nodding during the Oscar broadcast when someone else’s name is called. “I wasn’t surprised that Jamie got the award,” he said about the 2005 Academy Awards when Jamie Foxx took Best Actor for Ray over The Aviator. “But I knew that cameras would be stuffed up my face so I had my response ready. Anyone who says they don’t practice is a liar.”
He may not have to fake being happy for another actor this year. Pundits are predicting his new movie The Revenant could bring him that elusive honour. He plays American fur trapper Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who became a legend in 1823 when he survived a brutal bear attack and slogged across harsh terrain to get revenge on the man who left him to die.
This is DiCaprio’s Jeremiah Johnson, a movie that masks his matinee idol good looks with facial hair and grimaces. For much of the two-and-a-half-hour running time he is mute, alone on screen crawling across the frozen landscape, slowly inching his way toward vengeance. There are great physical demands made on the actor—the Bear-Maul-O-Rama being just one of the miseries he endures—but this is an internal performance. The character’s strength, pain, frustration, anger and intestinal fortitude are apparent not only in his actions—he cauterizes wounds with gun powder!—but, more importantly, in his eyes. There’s the will to survive and then there’s whatever is driving Glass and whatever that is, it’s written on DiCaprio’s face. It may not be his flashiest role—although he does get to disembowel a horse—but it is one of his best.
Nominations will be announced January 14 so we won’t know until then if he is chosen for sure, but the odds are good. So good that Vanity Fair declared, “This is going to be the year Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins that Oscar.”
Question is, why would someone who has everything want an Academy Award. What difference would it make in his life and career?
The truthful answer is that it would likely make no difference at all to his career, at least financially. He’s already in the top tier of Tinseltown salaries and the fabled “Oscar box office bump”—a sharp spike in ticket sales when the nominations are announced—hasn’t meant much in recent years.
The real win for DiCaprio would be in the prestige department. The Best Actor Oscar is a rare commodity. Only seventy-eight people have them—Daniel Day-Lewis has three, Jack Nicholson and seven others have two apiece—and while he is already a respected performer, winning one would put him in the company of Hollywood legends like Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Gary Cooper.
If he becomes the seventy-ninth actor to take home the gold it’s recognition from his peers but besides that, one of those statues is the perfect thing to lend some flair to the man who has everything’s private island décor.
The last time we saw Leonardo DiCaprio he was driving a Ferrari and picking up $26,000 dinner tabs. “The Wolf of Wall Street” star is back on the big screen in “The Revenant,” but now the fancy cars have been replaced with horses, the dinners with raw bison meat.
Very loosely based on real events, DiCaprio plays American fur trapper Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who became a legend when he trekked across country after a brutal bear attack. In the film it’s 1823 and Glass is scouting for a team of fur trappers. The territory is tough, the men even tougher. When Glass is mauled by a bear the company splits into two groups. The first, lead by Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) heads for home base, while the other—Glass’s son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), hotheaded trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and the inexperienced Jim Bridger (Will Poulter)—is paid handsomely to stay with Glass, and provide a decent burial when he succumbs to his injuries. Fitzgerald, more interested in getting paid than waiting for Glass to die, hurries the process along, stabbing Hawk and throwing the half dead scout into a hastily dug hole. When Glass comes to he has just one thing on his mind—revenge. “I ain’t afraid to die no more,” he says. “I done it already.”
This is Leo’s “Jeremiah Johnson,” a movie that masks his matinee idol good looks with facial hair and grimaces. His journey is at the heart of the movie but he shares the weight of carrying the film with Hardy. For much of the two-and-a-half-hour running time DiCaprio is mute, alone on screen crawling across the frozen landscape, slowly making his way toward Fitzgerald and his proposed revenge. There are great physical demands made on the actor—the Bear-Maul-O-Rama being just one of the miseries he endures—but this is an internal performance. The character’s strength, pain, frustration, anger and intestinal fortitude are apparent not only in his actions—he cauterizes wounds with gun powder!—but, more importantly, in his eyes. There’s the will to survive and then there’s whatever is driving Glass and whatever that is, it’s written on DiCaprio’s face. It may not be his flashiest role—although he does get to disembowel a horse—but it is one of his best.
Hardy’s Fitzgerald is painted in broader strokes. Driven by greed, this guy makes Bane look as morally bankrupt as Mary Poppins. Intimidating and ruthless, Hardy is a force of nature equal to anything Mother Nature places in Glass’s way.
Perhaps the “The Revenant’s” most complex character is Will Poulter’s Jim Bridger. He’s the runt of the litter, the youngest member of the expedition. Torn between loyalty to Hawk and Glass, his responsibility to his employers and his moral obligations, he is trapped in an impossible situation. Poulter pulls it off with a mix of steely determination and vulnerability.
“The Revenant” is the cinema of misery on screen and off. I’d suggest theatre-goers wear a sweater because the sense of cold and discomfort experienced by Glass is palpable.
On screen the primal story of revenge spares nothing to illustrate the hardships faced by all involved but director Alejandro González Iñárritu hasn’t simply made a gruesome film for the sake of upsetting the audience. Instead, it’s a movie that ends in a question mark. Is Glass’s payback justified or a hollow mission? Iñárritu leaves that decision to the audience, and it is sure to spark conversation as the closing credits roll.
Stories about The Revenant’s rough and tumble shoot have already passed into legend. Harsh filming conditions — it was minus 40 degrees with windchill factor for much of the Alberta shoot — turned the outdoor revenge drama into what one crew member called “a living hell.”
One of the film’s stars says he was “confused and stressed” during the shoot, but wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“It is something that I am only able to analyze and realize in hindsight,” says English actor Will Poulter. “I spent the entire experience peppered with these moments of total confusion and emotional stress; in a turmoil. Now I realize that is what I needed to experience. I wouldn’t have ever wanted to really gain control because then I wouldn’t have been experiencing anything realistic or wouldn’t have captured anything we needed. I’m glad for those moments.”
The 22-year-old, hot off the success of The Maze Runner and We’re the Millers, appears alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy in the gritty vengeance drama about fur trapper Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who became a legend when he trekked across harsh country after being left for dead following a brutal bear attack. Poulter plays Jim Bridger, an inexperienced fur trapper caught in an impossible situation — torn between loyalty to Glass, his responsibility to his employers and his moral obligations.
“On many occasions (director) Alejandro (Iñárritu) let me be because I was naturally confused and stressed by being pulled in many directions and not knowing what to do. He often thought the most appropriate thing to do was to allow me to be that. I would turn to him and say, ‘I don’t know what to do here,’ and he would say, ‘Why are we even having this conversation?’ The character doesn’t know what’s going on, so why should I?”
The Revenant is the cinema of misery: a primal story that puts its characters through their paces.
“I think this movie is about the human spirit and I think what Alejandro strove to achieve was a film that explored what humans are able to endure and what is worth enduring in this kind of experience. Is it family? Is it money? Is it simply the will to live another day in an environment you love and feel safe in? It’s an exploration of how much we can take as humans and what motivates us to endure these kinds of conditions.”
Poulter says The Revenant is “an emotionally affecting experience,” and adds, “there was no creating that without experiencing a lot of the hardships for real.” The gruelling outdoor shoot took place on 12 different locations in three different countries including Canada, United States and Argentina from October 2014 to August 2015. Thinking about the shoot Poulter remembers the hard times with pride.
“The moments that stick out most for me are those moments where I felt I was pushed to the brink emotionally and physically but achieving the shot or getting the take.
Ending the day was just unbelievable. There are a few of those days that stick out in my mind and that’s why it was so rewarding. It’s one thing to finish a hard day’s (work) and pat one another on the back. It’s another thing to finish a day you didn’t actually think you could get through and then pat each other on the back.”
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence first paired off in Silver Linings Playbook — he was a divorced substitute teacher, jailed for beating his wife’s boyfriend half to death; she was a troubled widow who needed his help to win a dance competition — and sparks flew.
Next they shared scenes, but no romance, in American Hustle. And, this weekend, they make it a trifecta with the release of Serena. Based on the novel by Ron Rash, Cooper and Lawrence play husband and wife lumber barons whose marriage becomes strained after she suffers a miscarriage. Despite having shared love scenes in movies, Cooper says they have kept the romance onscreen.
“I mean, first of all, I could be her father,” he says.
The re-teaming of Cooper and Lawrence in Serena proves that lightning does not always strike thrice.
The “it” couple had chemistry to burn in their previous pairings but fail to set off sparks here. As George and Serena they are ruthless and selfish, which should be the stuff of interesting characters, but the story throws so many hurdles their way that eventually it becomes one big, boring blur.
Some onscreen couples, however, have managed to keep the flame alive through several films.
After a 16-year separation, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan — the pre-eminent cinema sweethearts of the 1990s — will reunite in the World War II drama Ithaca.
The three rom coms that made them superstars, Joe Versus the Volcano, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, were fuelled by the platonic chemistry they share in real life.
“He makes me feel less alone,” says Ryan.
Kate Winslet and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio are so close in real life that her children refer to him as Uncle Leo. As Titanic’s star-crossed lovers Jack and Rose, they defined romantic tragedy for a whole generation before recoupling 11 years later in the feel-bad love story Revolutionary Road.
Despite what fans thought, their friendship never turned romantic off-screen. “He always saw me as one of the boys,” said Kate.
Despite falling in love over and over again in movies like The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates and Blended, Drew Barrymore says she and Adam Sandler have exchanged nothing more than a “church kiss.”
“That’s probably why we’ve been able to stick together all these years,” she says, “because there never was that awkward moment.”
The lesson learned is that chemistry off-screen often leads to good results on the screen, but not always. Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe fogged up the lens in Some Like It Hot, but reportedly did not like one another.
CTV’s film critic Richard Crouse highlights some of his favourite moments from the Golden Globes. Find out how Leonardo Di Caprio dissed the Hollywood Foreign Press!
Richard talks about the high and low points of the Golden Globes with CP24’s Stephen LeDrew, host of “Live at Noon.”
